"Wide load" status code(s)?

[solderpunk]

On Fri, Jun 12, 2020 at 07:21:03AM -0400, Natalie Pendragon wrote:
> Okay, I will jump on the update train!
> 
> GUS now provides, by default, size information for every result*.
> 
> It's also exposed as a new query filter, in case you want to explore
> more on your own. I put an example query below to show usage, but you
> can find more documentation on the about page [0].

These are fantastic updates, well done!

Out of curiosity, can you use your GUSly powers to easily tell us, say,
the mean and median size of resources served via Gemini?

How do you feel about the (wonderful!) GUS statistics page being updated
to give information on the size distribution?  Perhaps you could bin
resources into size ranges, say semi-open intervals, [0, 1Kib), [1Kib,
10Kib), [10Kib, 100Kib), etc, etc?

Since I am being greedy and asking you to do things, let me close by
singing the praises of GUS!

Back when new Gemini content was popping up at an insane rate, I would
spend a lot of time exploring and reading.  Weeks later I wonder things
like "where did I read that great retrospective write-up on the career
of a recently deceased motorsport legend?  I wonder if the author has
written anything more?", have absolutely *no* recollection of who wrote
it, or where it was hosted, or much else (I'm not a motorsport fan at
all so did not remember the names of any people, cars, courses, etc.
involved - but the thing was so well written and full of evident passion
that I enjoyed reading it as a complete outsider).  So I'd GUS for some
random small detail I could recall like "oil pressure" and, boom, there
it is.

Anybody who follows my phlog knows that one every few months I'll refer
to something I read in gopherspace but that I have forgotten the source
of and could not find later by checking likely places, so I have to
leave a note saying "if this was you, or you remember who it was, please
let me know!".  I'm thrilled that Geminispace may never have this
problem.

Seriously, Gemini search is already, somehow, a hundred, nay a thousand
times better than Gopher search has ever been, despite the great
disparity in time and attention between the two.  I would love to
understand why, and if there is some difference in the protocols that
explains it.  I have always suspected that Gopher's complete absence of
machine-readable signalling of whether a request succeeded or failed
must be a huge impediment to building a reliable indexer, but I have no
idea if that's actually the reason for the dramatic difference.

Anybody have any insight?

Cheers,
Solderpunk